9 And they came to the place of which God had given him knowledge; and there Abraham made the altar and put the wood in place on it, and having made tight the bands round Isaac his son, he put him on the wood on the altar.
For this reason am I loved by the Father, because I give up my life so that I may take it again. No one takes it away from me; I give it up of myself. I have power to give it up, and I have power to take it again. These orders I have from my Father.
By faith Abraham made an offering of Isaac, when he was tested: and he with whom the agreement had been made gave up as an offering the only son of his body, Of whom it had been said, From Isaac will your seed take their name: Judging that God was able to give life even to the dead; and because of this he did get him back as if from death.
And when Jesus had come to the end of all these words, he said to his disciples, After two days is the Passover, and the Son of man will be given up to the death of the cross. Then the chief priests and the rulers of the people came together in the house of the high priest, who was named Caiaphas. And they made designs together to take Jesus by some trick, and put him to death. But they said, Not while the feast is going on, for fear of trouble among the people. Now when Jesus was in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, There came to him a woman having a bottle of perfume of great price, and she put the perfume on his head when he was seated at table. But when the disciples saw it they were angry, saying, To what purpose is this waste? For we might have got much money for this and given it to the poor. But Jesus, seeing it, said to them, Why are you troubling the woman? she has done a kind act to me. For the poor you have ever with you, but me you have not for ever. For in putting this perfume on my body, she did it to make me ready for my last resting-place. Truly I say to you, Wherever this good news goes out in all the world, what this woman has done will be talked of in memory of her. Then one of the twelve, who was named Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, What will you give me, if I give him up to you? And the price was fixed at thirty bits of silver. And from that time he was watching for a chance to give him into their hands. Now on the first day of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Where are we to make ready for you to take the Passover meal? And he said to them, Go into the town to such a man, and say to him, The Master says, My time is near: I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples. And the disciples did as Jesus had said to them; and they made ready the Passover. Now when evening was come, he was seated at table with the twelve disciples; And while they were taking food, he said, Truly I say to you that one of you will be false to me. And they were very said, and said to him, one by one, Is it I, Lord? And he made answer and said, He who puts his hand into the plate with me, the same will be false to me. The Son of man goes, even as the Writings say of him: but a curse is on that man through whom the Son of man is given up; it would have been well for that man if he had never come into the world. And Judas, who was false to him, made answer and said, Is it I, Master? He says to him, Yes. And when they were taking food, Jesus took bread and, after blessing it, he gave the broken bread to the disciples and said, Take it; this is my body. And he took a cup and, having given praise, he gave it to them, saying,
And when they were near Jerusalem, and had come to Beth-phage, to the Mountain of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, Saying to them, Go into the little town in front of you, and straight away you will see an ass with a cord round her neck, and a young one with her; let them loose and come with them to me. And if anyone says anything to you, you will say, The Lord has need of them; and straight away he will send them. Now this took place so that these words of the prophet might come true, Say to the daughter of Zion, See, your King comes to you, gentle and seated on an ass, and on a young ass. And the disciples went and did as Jesus had given them orders, And got the ass and the young one, and put their clothing on them, and he took his seat on it. And all the people put their clothing down in the way; and others got branches from the trees, and put them down in the way. And those who went before him, and those who came after, gave loud cries, saying, Glory to the Son of David: A blessing on him who comes in the name of the Lord: Glory in the highest. And when he came into Jerusalem, all the town was moved, saying, Who is this? And the people said, This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee. And Jesus went into the Temple and sent out all who were trading there, overturning the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those trading in doves. And he said to them, It is in the Writings, My house is to be named a house of prayer, but you are making it a hole of thieves. And the blind and the broken in body came to him in the Temple, and he made them well. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the works of power which he did, and the children crying out in the Temple, Glory to the son of David, they were angry and said to him, Have you any idea what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, Yes: have you not seen in the Writings, From the lips of children and babies at the breast you have made your praise complete? And he went away from them, and went out of the town to Bethany, and was there for the night. Now in the morning when he was coming back to the town, he had a desire for food. And seeing a fig-tree by the wayside, he came to it, and saw nothing on it but leaves only; and he said to it, Let there be no fruit from you from this time forward for ever. And straight away the fig-tree became dry and dead. And when the disciples saw it they were surprised, saying, How did the fig-tree become dry in so short a time? And Jesus in answer said to them, Truly I say to you, If you have faith, without doubting, not only may you do what has been done to the fig-tree, but even if you say to this mountain, Be taken up and put into the sea, it will be done. And all things, whatever you make request for in prayer, having faith, you will get. And when he had come into the Temple, the chief priests and those in authority over the people came to him while he was teaching, and said, By what authority do you do these things? and who gave you this authority? And Jesus said to them in answer, I will put one question to you, and if you give me the answer, I will say by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, where did it come from? from heaven or from men? And they were reasoning among themselves, saying, If we say, From heaven; he will say to us, Why then did you not have faith in him? But if we say, From men; we are in fear of the people, because all take John to be a prophet. And they made answer and said, We have no idea. Then he said to them, And I will not say to you by what authority I do these things. But how does it seem to you? A man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go and do work today in the vine-garden. And he said in answer, I will not: but later, changing his decision, he went. And he came to the second and said the same. And he made answer and said, I go, sir: and went not. Which of the two did his father's pleasure? They say, The first. Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you, that tax-farmers and loose women are going into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you had no faith in him, but the tax-farmers and the loose women had faith in him: and you, when you saw it, did not even have regret for your sins, so as to have faith in him. Give ear to another story. A master of a house made a vine garden, and put a wall round it, and made a place for crushing out the wine, and made a tower, and let it out to field-workers, and went into another country. And when the time for the fruit came near, he sent his servants to the workmen, to get the fruit. And the workmen made an attack on his servants, giving blows to one, putting another to death, and stoning another. Again, he sent other servants more in number than the first: and they did the same to them. But after that he sent his son to them, saying, They will have respect for my son. But when the workmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is he who will one day be the owner of the property; come, let us put him to death and take his heritage. And they took him and, driving him out of the vine-garden, put him to death. When, then, the lord of the vine-garden comes, what will he do to those workmen? They say to him, He will put those cruel men to a cruel death, and will let out the vine-garden to other workmen, who will give him the fruit when it is ready. Jesus says to them, Did you never see in the Writings, The stone which the builders put on one side, the same has been made the chief stone of the building: this was the Lord's doing, and it is a wonder in our eyes? For this reason I say to you, The kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and will be given to a nation producing the fruits of it. Any man falling on this stone will be broken, but he on whom it comes down will be crushed to dust. And when his stories came to the ears of the chief priests and the Pharisees, they saw that he was talking of them. And though they had a desire to take him, they were in fear of the people, because in their eyes he was a prophet.
But it was our pain he took, and our diseases were put on him: while to us he seemed as one diseased, on whom God's punishment had come. But it was for our sins he was wounded, and for our evil doings he was crushed: he took the punishment by which we have peace, and by his wounds we are made well. We all went wandering like sheep; going every one of us after his desire; and the Lord put on him the punishment of us all. Men were cruel to him, but he was gentle and quiet; as a lamb taken to its death, and as a sheep before those who take her wool makes no sound, so he said not a word. They took away from him help and right, and who gave a thought to his fate? for he was cut off from the land of the living: he came to his death for the sin of my people. And they put his body into the earth with sinners, and his last resting-place was with the evil-doers, though he had done no wrong, and no deceit was in his mouth. And the Lord was pleased ... see a seed, long life, ... will do well in his hand. ...
And he said to him, Take your son, your dearly loved only son Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and give him as a burned offering on one of the mountains of which I will give you knowledge. And Abraham got up early in the morning, and made ready his ass, and took with him two of his young men and Isaac, his son, and after the wood for the burned offering had been cut, he went on his way to the place of which God had given him word. And on the third day, Abraham, lifting up his eyes, saw the place a long way off.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Genesis 22
Commentary on Genesis 22 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Offering Up of Isaac. - For many years had Abraham waited to be fulfilled. At length the Lord had given him the desired heir of his body by his wife Sarah, and directed him to send away the son of the maid. And now that this son had grown into a young man, the word of God came to Abraham to offer up this very son, who had been given to him as the heir of the promise, for a burnt-offering, upon one of the mountains which should be shown him. This word did not come from his own heart, - was not a thought suggested by the sight of the human sacrifices of the Canaanites, that he would offer a similar sacrifice to his God; nor did it originate with the tempter to evil. The word came from Ha-Elohim , the personal, true God, who tried him ( נסּה ), i.e., demanded the sacrifice of the only, beloved son, as a proof and attestation of his faith. The issue shows, that God did not desire the sacrifice of Isaac by slaying and burning him upon the altar, but his complete surrender, and a willingness to offer him up to God even by death.
Nevertheless the divine command was given in such a form, that Abraham could not understand it in any other way than as requiring an outward burnt-offering, because there was no other way in which Abraham could accomplish the complete surrender of Isaac, than by an actual preparation for really offering the desired sacrifice. This constituted the trial, which necessarily produced a severe internal conflict in his mind. Ratio humana simpliciter concluderet aut mentiri promissionem aut mandatum non esse Dei sed Diaboli; est enim contradictio manifesta. Si enim debet occidi Isaac, irrita est promissio; sin rata est promissio, impossibile est hoc esse Dei mandatum ( Luther ). But Abraham brought his reason into captivity to the obedience of faith. He did not question the truth of the word of God, which had been addressed to him in a mode that was to his mind perfectly infallible (not in a vision of the night, however, of which there is not a syllable in the text), but he stood firm in his faith, “accounting that god was able to raise him up, even from the dead” Hebrews 11:19). Without taking counsel with flesh and blood, Abraham started early in the morning (Genesis 22:3, Genesis 22:4), with his son Isaac and two servants, to obey the divine command; and on the third day (for the distance from Beersheba to Jerusalem is about 20 1/2 hours; Rob. Pal. iii. App. 66, 67) he saw in the distance the place mentioned by God, the land of Moriah, i.e., the mountainous country round about Jerusalem. The name מריּה , composed of the Hophal partic. of ראה and the divine name יה , an abbreviation of יהוה (lit., “the shown of Jehovah ,” equivalent to the manifestation of Jehovah ), is no doubt used proleptically in Genesis 22:2, and given to the mountain upon which the sacrifice was to be made, with direct reference to this event and the appearance of Jehovah to Abraham there. This is confirmed by Genesis 22:14, where the name is connected with the event, and explained in the fuller expression Jehovah-jireh . On the ground of this passage the mountain upon which Solomon built the temple is called המּריּה with reference to the appearance of the angel of the Lord to David on that mountain at the threshing-floor of Araunah (2 Samuel 24:16-17), the old name being revived by this appearance.
When in sight of the distant mountain, Abraham left the servants behind with the ass, that he might perform the last and hardest part of the journey alone with Isaac, and, as he said to the servants, “ worship yonder and then return .” The servants were not to see what would take place there; for they could not understand this “worship,” and the issue even to him, notwithstanding his saying “we will come again to you,” was still involved in the deepest obscurity. This last part of the journey is circumstantially described in Genesis 22:6-8, to show how strong a conflict every step produced in the paternal heart of the patriarch. They go both together, he with the fire and the knife in his hand, and his son with the wood for the sacrifice upon his shoulder. Isaac asks his father, where is the lamb for the burnt-offering; and the father replies, not “Thou wilt be it, my son,” but “God ( Elohim without the article - God as the all-pervading supreme power) will provide it;” for he will not and cannot yet communicate the divine command to his son. Non vult filium macerare longa cruce et tentatione ( Luther ).
Having arrived at the appointed place, Abraham built an altar, arranged the wood upon it, bound his son and laid him upon the wood of the altar, and then stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
In this eventful moment, when Isaac lay bound like a lamb upon the altar, about to receive the fatal stroke, the angel of the Lord called down from heaven to Abraham to stop, and do his son no harm. For the Lord now knew that Abraham was אלהים ירא God-fearing, and that his obedience of faith did extend even to the sacrifice of his own beloved son. The sacrifice was already accomplished in his heart, and he had fully satisfied the requirements of God. He was not to slay his son: therefore God prevented the outward fulfilment of the sacrifice by an immediate interposition, and showed him a ram, which he saw, probably being led to look round through a rustling behind him, with its horns fast in a thicket ( אחר adv . behind, in the background); and as an offering provided by God Himself, he sacrificed it instead of his son.
From this interposition of God, Abraham called the place Jehovah-jireh , “ Jehovah sees,” i.e., according to Genesis 22:8, provides, providet ; so that ( אשׁר , as in Genesis 13:16, is equivalent to כּן על , Genesis 10:9) men are still accustomed to say, “ On the mountain where Jehovah appears ” ( יראה ), from which the name Moriah arose. The rendering “on the mount of Jehovah it is provided” is not allowable, for the Niphal of the verb does not mean provideri , but “appear.” Moreover, in this case the medium of God's seeing or interposition was His appearing.
After Abraham had offered the ram, the angel of the Lord called to him a second time from heaven, and with a solemn oath renewed the former promises, as a reward for this proof of his obedience of faith (cf. Genesis 12:2-3). To confirm their unchangeableness, Jehovah swore by Himself (cf. Hebrews 6:13.), a thing which never occurs again in His intercourse with the patriarchs; so that subsequently not only do we find repeated references to this oath (Genesis 24:7; Genesis 26:3; Genesis 50:24; Exodus 13:5, Exodus 13:11; Exodus 33:1, etc.), but, as Luther observes, all that is said in Psalms 89:36; Psalms 132:11; Psalms 110:4 respecting the oath given to David, is founded upon this. Sicut enim promissio seminis Abrahae derivata est in semen Davidis, ita Scriptura S. jusjurandum Abrahae datum in personam Davidis transfert . For in the promise upon which these psalms are based nothing is said about an oath (cf. 2 Sam 7; 1 Chronicles 17:1). The declaration on oath is still further confirmed by the addition of יהוה נאם “ edict ( Ausspruch ) of Jehovah, ” which, frequently as it occurs in the prophets, is met with in the Pentateuch only in Numbers 14:28, and (without Jehovah ) in the oracles of Balaam, Numbers 24:3, Numbers 24:15-16. As the promise was intensified in form, so was it also in substance. To express the innumerable multiplication of the seed in the strongest possible way, a comparison with the sand of the sea-shore is added to the previous simile of the stars. And this seed is also promised the possession of the gate of its enemies, i.e., the conquest of the enemy and the capture of his cities (cf. Genesis 24:60).
This glorious result of the test so victoriously stood by Abraham, not only sustains the historical character of the event itself, but shows in the clearest manner that the trial was necessary to the patriarch's life of faith, and of fundamental importance to his position in relation to the history of salvation. The question, whether the true God could demand a human sacrifice, was settled by the fact that God Himself prevented the completion of the sacrifice; and the difficulty, that at any rate God contradicted Himself, if He first of all demanded a sacrifice and then prevented it from being offered, is met by the significant interchange of the names of God, since God, who commanded Abraham to offer up Isaac, is called Ha-Elohim , whilst the actual completion of the sacrifice is prevented by “the angel of Jehovah ,” who is identical with Jehovah Himself. The sacrifice of the heir, who had been both promised and bestowed, was demanded neither by Jehovah , the God of salvation or covenant God, who had given Abraham this only son as the heir of the promise, nor by Elohim , God as creator, who has the power to give life and take it away, but by He-Elohim , the true God, whom Abraham had acknowledged and adored as his personal God, and with whom he had entered into a personal relation. Coming from the true God whom Abraham served, the demand could have no other object than to purify and sanctify the feelings of the patriarch's heart towards his son and towards his God, in accordance with the great purpose of his call. It was designed to purify his love to the son of his body from all the dross of carnal self-love and natural selfishness which might still adhere to it, and so to transform it into love to God, from whom he had received him, that he should no longer love the beloved son as his flesh and blood, but simply and solely as a gift of grace, as belonging to his God-a trust committed to him, which he should be ready at any moment to give back to God. As he had left his country, kindred, and father's house at the call of God (Genesis 12:1), so was he in his walk with God cheerfully to offer up even his only son, the object of all his longing, the hope of his life, the joy of his old age. And still more than this, not only did he possess and love in Isaac the heir of his possessions (Genesis 15:2), but it was upon him that all the promises of God rested: in Isaac should his seed be called (Genesis 21:12). By the demand that he should sacrifice to God this only son of his wife Sarah, in whom his seed was to grow into a multitude of nations (Genesis 17:4, Genesis 17:6, Genesis 17:16), the divine promise itself seemed to be cancelled, and the fulfilment not only of the desires of his heart, but also of the repeated promises of his God, to be frustrated. And by this demand his faith was to be perfected into unconditional trust in God, into the firm assurance that God could even raise him up from the dead. - But this trial was not only one of significance to Abraham, by perfecting him, through the conquest of flesh and blood, to be the father of the faithful, the progenitor of the Church of God; Isaac also was to be prepared and sanctified by it for his vocation in connection with the history of salvation. In permitting himself to be bound and laid upon the altar without resistance, he gave up his natural life to death, to rise to a new life through the grace of God. On the altar he was sanctified to God, dedicated as the first beginning of the holy Church of God, and thus “the dedication of the first-born, which was afterwards enjoined in the law, was perfectly fulfilled in him.” If therefore the divine command exhibits in the most impressive way the earnestness of the demand of God upon His people to sacrifice all to Him, not excepting the dearest of their possessions (cf. Matthew 10:37, and Luke 14:26); the issue of the trial teaches that the true God does not demand a literal human sacrifice from His worshippers, but the spiritual sacrifice of an unconditional denial of the natural life, even to submission to death itself. By the sacrifice of a ram as a burnt-offering in the place of his son, under divine direction, not only was animal sacrifice substituted for human, and sanctioned as an acceptable symbol of spiritual self-sacrifice, but the offering of human sacrifices by the heathen was condemned and rejected as an ungodly ἐθελοθρησεία . And this was done by Jehovah , the God of salvation, who prevented the outward completion of the sacrifice. By this the event acquires prophetic importance for the Church of the Lord, to which the place of sacrifice points with peculiar clearness, viz., Mount Moriah, upon which under the legal economy all the typical sacrifices were offered to Jehovah ; upon which also, in the fulness of time, God the Father gave up His only-begotten Son as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, that by this one true sacrifice the shadows of the typical sacrifices might be rendered both real and true. If therefore the appointment of Moriah as the scene of the sacrifice of Isaac, and the offering of a ram in his stead, were primarily only typical in relation to the significance and intent of the Old Testament institution of sacrifice; this type already pointed to the antitype to appear in the future, when the eternal love of the heavenly Father would perform what it had demanded of Abraham; that is to say, when God would not spare His only Son, but give Him up to the real death, which Isaac suffered only in spirit, that we also might die with Christ spiritually, and rise with Him to everlasting life (Romans 8:32; Romans 6:5, etc.).
Descendants of Nahor. - With the sacrifice of Isaac the test of Abraham's faith was now complete, and the purpose of his divine calling answered: the history of his life, therefore, now hastens to its termination. But first of all there is introduced quite appropriately an account of the family of his brother Nahor, which is so far in place immediately after the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, that it prepares the way for the history of the marriage of the heir of the promise. The connection is pointed out in Genesis 22:20, as compared with Genesis 11:29, in the expression, “ she also .” Nahor, like Ishmael and Jacob, had twelve sons, eight by his wife Milcah and four by his concubine; whereas Jacob had his by two wives and two maids, and Ishmael apparently all by one wife. This difference with regard to the mothers proves that the agreement as to the number twelve rests upon a good historical tradition, and is no product of a later myth, which traced to Nahor the same number of tribes as to Ishmael and Jacob. For it is a perfectly groundless assertion or assumption, that Nahor's twelve sons were the fathers of as many tribes. There are only a few names, of which it is probable that their bearers were the founders of tribes of the same name. On Uz , see Genesis 10:23. Buz is mentioned in Jeremiah 25:23 along with Dedan and Tema as an Arabian tribe; and Elihu was a Buzite of the family of Ram (Job 32:2). Kemuel, the father of Aram, was not the founder of the Aramaeans, but the forefather of the family of Ram, to which the Buzite Elihu belonged, - Aram being written for Ram, like Arammim in 2 Kings 8:29 for Rammim in 2 Chronicles 22:5. Chesed again was not the father of the Chasdim (Chaldeans), for they were older than Chesed; at the most he was only the founder of one branch of the Chasdim , possibly those who stole Job's camels ( Knobel ; vid., Job 1:17). Of the remaining names, Bethuel was not the founder of a tribe, but the father of Laban and Rebekah (Genesis 25:20). The others are never met with again, with the exception of Maachach , from whom probably the Maachites (Deuteronomy 3:14; Joshua 12:5) in the land of Maacah, a small Arabian kingdom in the time of David (2 Samuel 10:6, 2 Samuel 10:8; 1 Chronicles 19:6), derived their origin and name; though Maachah frequently occurs as the name of a person (1 Kings 2:39; 1 Chronicles 11:43; 1 Chronicles 27:16).